In the catacombs at Rome was preserved a relic of the old Mithraic worship. It was a picture of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering gifts.
Prof. Franz Cumont, of the University of Ghent, writes as follows concerning the religion of Mithra and the religion of Christ: “The sectaries of the Persian god, like the Christians’, purified themselves by baptism, received by a species of confirmation the power necessary to combat the spirit of evil; and expected from a Lord’s supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December.... They both preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as meritorious and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence, renunciation and self-control. Their conceptions of the world and of the destiny of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by beatified ones, situate in the upper regions, and of a Hell, peopled by demons, situate in the bowels of the earth. They both placed a flood at the beginning of history; they both assigned as the source of their condition, a primitive revelation; they both, finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final conflagration of the universe” (The Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 190, 191).
The Rev. Charles Biggs, D.D., says: “The disciples of Mithra formed an organized church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation, Atonement, and a Savior, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of Christ” (The Christian Platonists, p. 240).
I quote again from McClintock and Strong: “In modern times Christian writers have been induced to look favorably upon the assertion that some of our ecclesiastical usages (e. g., the institution of the Christmas festival) originated in the cultus of Mithraism. Some writers who refuse to accept the Christian religion as of supernatural origin, have even gone so far as to institute a close comparison with the founder of Christianity; and Dupuis and others, going even beyond this, have not hesitated to pronounce the Gospel simply a branch of Mithraism” (Art. Mithra).
The Christian Father Manes, founder of the heretical sect known as Manicheans, believed that Christ and Mithra were one. His teaching, according to Mosheim, was as follows: “Christ is that glorious intelligence which the Persians called Mithras.... His residence is in the sun” (Ecclesiastical History, 3rd century, Part 2, ch. 5).
The Mithraic worship at one time covered a large portion of the ancient world. It flourished as late as the second century, but finally went down before its young and invincible rival which appropriated, to a great extent, its doctrines, rites and customs.
Sosiosh.
The Messianic idea, as we have seen, came from Persia. The expected Messiah of the Jews and the Christ of Christians are of Persian origin. Sosiosh, the Messiah of the Persians, is the son of Zoroaster, “begotten in a supernatural way.” He constitutes a part of the Persian Trinity. He exists, as yet, only in a spiritual form. His incarnation and advent on earth are yet to be. When he comes he will bring with him a new revelation. He will awaken the dead and preside at the last judgment. Zoroaster, it is claimed, predicted his coming, declaring that he would be born of a virgin, and that a star would indicate the place of his birth. “As soon, therefore,” said Zoroaster, “as you shall behold the star, follow it whithersoever it shall lead you and adore that mysterious child, offering your gifts to him with profound humility.” “And, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.... And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down, and worshiped him; and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts” ([Matthew ii, 9, 11]).